A new study demonstrates that when gambling, almost winning promotes significant recruitment of win-related circuitry within the brain and enhances the motivation to gamble.
The research, published by Cell Press in the February 12th issue of the journal Neuron, provides insight into why gambling is so attractive and may shed light on why some individuals develop a compulsion to gamble.
Despite the common saying amongst gamblers that "the house always wins," gambling remains a popular form of entertainment. Research has shown that near-misses (such as two cherries on the slot machine) and a sense of control over the game (such as the chance to throw the dice) promote gambling tendencies and may be associated with the addictiveness of gambling. However, little is known about the brain mechanisms involved.
"We devised a series of experiments to elicit near-miss and control phenomena in the laboratory and used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to explore the brain mechanisms underlying these cognitive distortions," explains senior study author Dr. Luke Clark from the Behavioural and Clinical Neuroscience Institute at the University of Cambridge.
Dr. Clark and colleagues focused on the ventral striatum and medial frontal cortex, which previous research had implicated in processing rewards and drugs of abuse. They also examined associations between the level of activation in this circuitry during gambling and a subjective measure of gambling propensity.